Performance Management

Getting the best out of your employees is key. That's where performance reviews and other tools come to your aid. Plus, thinning out those who can't succeed is more difficult, but necessary. These posts will help you stay abreast.

What qualities in that person did you most admire? Why did you like working for them? What did they do to make a positive impact on you and your career?

While everybody has different criteria for what makes somebody a great manager, there are typically some consistencies. I bet the person you’re thinking of helped you play to your strengths and work on your weaknesses. They celebrated your successes and guided you through failure. They listened to you, developed you, empowered you, and trusted you.

That’s impossible all the time. But we can adopt an approach that at least lessens the pain of engaging them – without turning into an argument.

Salespeople are probably the most adept at dealing with combative people. They’re the ones who hear the complaints about a product or service (whether it’s their fault or not), so they come to expect some level of confrontation with almost every encounter.

They’re prepared, so they know how to respond. So you might want to use these tips from seasoned salespeople the next time you face a confrontational person:

So, you’ve decided to call an employee in to talk about his performance. Maybe you’ve noticed the employee seems disinterested about taking on new tasks. Or that his work is regularly late when it used to be prompt.

Regardless, you know you have to have “the talk.”

How you approach the performance chat will affect the response you’ll get – and the turnaround you’re hoping for.

But even though your main goal is to improve the employee’s performance, your chat might backfire if you have an underlying motive going in.

You know the ones: They never see the upside of anything, they’re persistently negative and never seem to know when to stifle it. Hand them a million dollars, they’d complain you didn’t give them anything to carry it in.

But not all complainers deserve a brush off. In a lot of cases, you can cultivate your complainers and put them to good use.

Good employees fear rejection from their managers more than anything. When it comes to that raise, or the extra day, or the idea they have, they want to hear “yes.”

Not surprisingly, most of us hate even more to be the “rejector.”

One of the uncomfortable situations managers find themselves in is denying a promotion to an employee who’s applied for a higher position. Since the employee has shown an interest in improving his or her status, which also shows an interest in the company, it’s doubly hard to deny the request – even though there are good reasons for doing so.

You know the employee isn’t going to take it well. So, it takes some deft handling to deliver it.

Giving and receiving feedback is an interaction we all tend to dodge in one way or another.

It’s not our fault, really – we’re hardwired to feel threatened when receiving feedback, and knowing that makes it hard to give.

Our brain is constantly scanning our surroundings to determine whether we’re safe. When it senses danger, our fight-or-flight response kicks in, and our mind goes into defense mode. From a neurological perspective, the words “Let me give you some feedback” hit the same pain circuits as if we were physically hit.